Why Read?

Why Read?

I’ve just finished writing a piece for the journal of The Society of Existential Analysis. Formally it was a review of two books about what books or literature can tell us about the stages of life. In practice it made me think about the wider questions:

Why Read? Why do we read?

Jean-Paul Sartre entitled his autobiography Pourquoi Ecrire? (Why Write?). And we may ask Pourquoi Lire? (Why read?) We may ask why, in the age of the internet, should we read books at all? and I do mean books – though these days you can read them on an electronic device.

Or even more precisely, we may ask, as Italo Calvino (a novelist as existential as Camus) once did: ‘Pourquoi lire les classiques?’ Why (should we) read the classics?

Kate Thompson, MA, CJT is a BACP (British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy) senior accredited Supervisor & Counsellor who trained in London and at The Center for Journal Therapy, Denver, Colorado after a first degree in English Literature at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is an existential therapist who works with writing as part of her pratice.